Preckwinkle orders tracking of overtime

County aims to identify workers on pace to exceed annual limit

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle on Thursday moved to gain control of excessive overtime racked up by hundreds of county employees.

Preckwinkle ordered the comptroller's office to "create a tracking mechanism to help offices and departments manage their overtime and flag individuals who are on pace to exceed" a county-imposed overtime limit, said her spokeswoman, Kristen Mack.

Preckwinkle's directive, effective immediately, was an acknowledgment that action needed to be taken to more closely monitor county employees' overtime hours.

Theannouncement came after the Tribune last week detailed how, years after the county promised to cut back on overtime, little improvement had been made. A Tribune analysis of payroll records showed that county officials paid about $65.4 million in overtime in fiscal year 2011, a 1 percent drop from 2008.

County commissioners in 2005, concerned about financial and safety issues, unanimously passed a resolution that placed a cap on the number of overtime hours employees could work. The resolution prohibits employees from working more than 624 hours of overtime per year, except in emergencies.

But the Tribune found that 396 county workers — 303 of them in health care — eclipsed the 624-hour cap in 2011.

The Health and Hospitals System accounted for about 61 percent of the total overtime paid. And in each of the last four years, the health system has exceeded its budget for overtime, running up about $40 million a year.

Health system officials estimated there are nearly 250 nurse vacancies systemwide, which has contributed to nurses logging extra hours.

Mack said the comptroller's office would produce biweekly payroll reports that would help departments manage work hours and detect employees "who are racking up excessive overtime."

"It would give managers a tool to assess an individual's overtime and structure their staffing accordingly, potentially avoiding future use of overtime," Mack said in an email response to questions.

She said reports,which would start in the first payroll of 2013, would be given to every county department and the offices of separately elected officials, such as the sheriff.

The Tribune found that the sheriff's office, the second-largest county agency behind the hospitals system, had seen overtime increase about 25 percent in 2011 compared with 2008. The biggest driver of overtime is the Cook County Jail, which houses about 9,700 inmates.

Of the 44 sheriff's employees who totaled more than 624 hours of overtime last year, 37 worked at the jail.